


Mistake

by WhatWouldLilyDo



Series: Nursey Week [1]
Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Bipolar Disorder, Drinking with medication, Gen, Hazeapalooza, Nursey Week, Trans Chris "Chowder" Chow
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-08
Updated: 2017-02-08
Packaged: 2018-09-22 18:38:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,444
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9620447
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhatWouldLilyDo/pseuds/WhatWouldLilyDo
Summary: Prompt: Mistake or Silence.Written forNursey Week





	

**Author's Note:**

> Day one of Nursey Week! For each of these I’ll be doing a main focus out of the two prompts, though elements of the second will be worked in, just because that’s the way it ended up going.
> 
> This particular one is Nursey’s PoV of Hazeapalooza, as it is told in chapter 5 of my fic [Fresh](http://archiveofourown.org/works/9337325). The only thing which you need to know if you haven’t read that is that Nursey and Dex are roommates, and that Chowder told Lardo his secret already. This ficlet has trigger warnings for accidental outing; drinking with medication; and symptoms of panic and mania (for more details see endnotes).

“Are you coming back to the dorm?”  
  


Derek stared at his phone, willing Dex to answer him. He couldn’t remember exactly what he had said which had triggered the fight, but he had apologized dozens of times and then at the Haus he had thought it had blown over, Dex quietly avoiding any mention of it, until he had stiffly announced he was going to the library to finish his essay and walked out without so much of a glance at Derek.

It was stressful, he decided, caring for somebody you didn’t get along with. It was especially stressful caring for someone who was supposed to live with you but was avoiding you. He sighed and slumped lower on the couch to wait for him to get back from the library.

A banging jerked Derek back to alertness. He had fallen asleep, sprawled across the couch, his phone pressed against his arm. He stumbled slightly as he got up, trying to figure out what time it was and who could be at the door. Nikki sometimes forgot her key, though, and he hadn’t seen her that evening, so he couldn’t leave it and hope whoever it was went away.

He certainly wasn’t expecting Shitty to be there. A self-conscious hand rose to his hair, which he knew must be a mess from pulling on it in worry and then sleeping in a strange position. Meanwhile, his mind raced with all the reasons why Shitty might show up at his door, when Dex still hadn’t returned.

“Shit. Is he—”

And that was when his world plunged into darkness.

* * *

Derek enjoyed it better when he could get drunk, rather than watching everyone else descend into inebriation whilst he stayed sober. He had taken the pills he wasn’t supposed to drink with that evening, though, so he only let himself risk a couple of Natty Lights. Luckily, the Samwell Men’s Hockey team didn’t take hazing as seriously as some teams. In fact, it turned out to be a pretty good laugh skating about with half the team more than tipsy, especially when Shitty found out that Jack had missed his own hazing.

Shitty made sure of it that Derek had no chance to talk to his fellow frogs, but even if he hadn’t it probably would have been a bad time to talk to Dex now that alcohol was loosening his tongue. When they were finally knelt on the ice together, Derek’s legs going numb without a beer jacket, Dex babbled about Jack’s ass to Jack himself, who just looked amused by the whole conversation, but Derek was sure that Dex would die of humiliation once he was sober, so drawing everyone else’s attention to it would be a terrible idea.

“So is no one going to talk about C’s mad flush right now?” he asked, instead, for Chowder was muttering to himself, head resting on the back of Dex’s shoulder. “Chowder you had one Natty Light.”

Chowder's head snapped up, and Derek found his eyes drifting down to his chest. He blinked once, and shook himself. _Locker room rules_ , he reminded himself. However, as Chowder retorted without a slur, but with a strong Californian accent, Derek couldn’t help but flicker his gaze down a couple more times. He had never seen Chowder getting changed, he was now realizing. He had definitely never seen the two symmetrical scars running across his chest before, faint and nearly unnoticeable if you weren’t closeby.

“No talking!” Ransom scolded them, and Derek jerked back to reality. He couldn’t be caught staring, both because that was totally not chill, and because Chowder hadn’t told any of them that he’d had surgery on his chest - or at least, Derek was fairly certain those scars had to be the result of surgery. He knew that there were multiple explanations, but one in particular made his breath hitch. Being accidentally outed was not the way Chowder deserved to spend his evening.

Derek spent the next few minutes in a panic. Chowder was taken up in doing what the upperclassmen ordered them to do, and nobody else seemed to have noticed. Everyone whose eye he tried to catch just smiled at him encouragingly, or frowned at him because he was being slow to follow instructions, despite being the one who had drunk the least. Derek, though, was pretty sure that his olanzapine was mixing with the alcohol in his veins, and he had to focus on the patch of ice in front of him to stop himself from visualising it. He felt more and more detached from himself as his anxiety spiked.

“To the Haus!” shouted Holster, and there was movement around him. Nursey was pulled to his feet, and he swayed when it made his head spin.

“Brah, you okay?”

Shitty looked at him in concern, and Nursey couldn’t stay silent any longer.

“Chowder needs a sweater,” he blurted.

“What?” Shitty looked even more worried now. “Brah, are you— Fuck, you’re not hallucinating are you?”

Doubt plagued Nursey’s mind. He had forgotten that Shitty even knew about his hallucinations, but maybe that was a possibility now. His medication just wasn’t working properly. He had drunk too much, and dosage was even more important when you were taking multiple medications, so maybe… maybe… _maybe_. “I don’t know. I don’t—”

“Yo, what’s going on?” Lardo appeared at Shitty’s side.

“He says Chowder needs a sweater. I don’t— Lards, he’s— We need to keep an eye on him.”

The words washed over Nursey. He concentrated on staying upright and not letting panic get the better of him. He tried to ground himself, and bring his mind back to his own body. His feet were cold. That was good to feel.

“Shit!” Lardo hit herself on the head as if she had only just remembered something important. “He’s right, Shits. Chowder needs— _Fuck_ , I can’t believe I let this happen.”

“We made a mistake,” Nursey whispered.

“Yeah, we really did, bro,” Lardo agreed. Shitty looked around at the two of them in confusion, then back at Chowder, and he paled.

“Right, I’m on that. Bitty won’t question me taking it.”

Nursey was left to lean on Lardo as they waited for Ollie and Wicks to get to him with the blindfolds they were putting on all the frogs.

“Seriously, bro, you okay?” she asked quietly.

“Shouldn’t have drunk,” he replied, with a shake of his head. “Made a mistake.”

“You need 911?”

Her hand was warm on his arm. That was good to feel, too.

“I kind of need a Disney film and a soft blanket, but I’ll be okay.” At least his mind was clear enough to know that.

“You want a sweater yourself?”

He shook his head. “Chowder—”

“He’s okay, bro. Is that what this is about?”

“Yeah, I—” He closed his eyes and shook his head. “I don’t know.”

“What’s going on?”

He didn’t know how to answer that, but luckily it was Shitty who responded, so he guessed she hadn’t been asking him in the first place.

“I’ve never seen it like this before, and his diagnosis happened after I left Andover, but one of our old mutual friends from there rang me about it a bit. He dissociates when he’s stressed. He used to hallucinate as well, but then they put him on medication for it. He has bipolar.”

It was easy listening to Shitty talk, and now that his heart-rate had slowed and he was starting to feel a little more grounded, Nursey found the words to explain it again. “I don’t get stressed. My brain short-circuits too soon for that and I stop being me. It’s like I’m floating through life all zombie-like.”

“Zombies don’t float.

“Like you know that.”

Shitty grinned. “You back, brah?”

Derek took a moment to assess the situation. His feet were still cold. His leg was shaking but when he noticed, he was able to stop it. His head was no longer spinning. His breathing was even, and his hand itched where his nails had dug into the skin unconsciously. “I’m back,” he finally decided.

"You need anything?"

"I'm chill, bro."

“Oi, are we going or what?” Ransom called over.

“Yeah, yeah, we’re going,” Shitty replied, and he smiled at Derek again. “Are you okay if we pass you onto Ollie and Wicks? We’re letting Bitty guide Jack, and we’ll go with Chowder to make sure he’s okay.”

“Yeah, that’s chill.” He felt a lot better already, even if he did still just want to curl up in bed with Netflix. Sometimes, maybe, mistakes weren’t as bad looking back on them as they seemed at the time.

**Author's Note:**

> Chowder is trans, and has told Lardo about this before (chapter 1 of Fresh). He gets drunk enough to not be aware of what he's doing and this is what leads to the events regarding him in this scene and [chapter 5](http://archiveofourown.org/works/9337325/chapters/21499523) of Fresh. The way this is handled is explored in chapter 5 of Fresh. (Read it from the beginning [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/9337325))
> 
> When Nursey realizes that he has accidentally discovered Chowder's secret, he starts to worry and, thanks to the combination of his medication (a mood stabilizer and an antipsychotic) and alcohol, this starts to escalate into panic, and he dissociates (something he later comments is fairly common for him when he's stressed). In this time there's some mention of visualizing veins. Shitty, already knowing about his bipolar, asks if he's hallucinating and he doubts whether he is or not, and worries that his meds have stopped working. He applies grounding techniques, and manages to bring himself out of the dissociation, but there is little to no after-care (because "it's chill". gdi Nursey.)
> 
> Also on tumblr [here](http://whatwouldlilydo.tumblr.com/post/156975683477/mistake-or-silence).


End file.
